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People of Interest

Juneau Police Department

Questions Posted to "Ask a Dispatcher"

Q. I live out the road; which means i have to drive past the rock quarry by the ferry terminal. Is there any rules or regulations regarding the vehicles that are leaving the work site and the dirt/sand they track onto the highway? I have a relatively new car that I take care of religiously; last work season every time i had to drive through that stretch of road my car would get covered in the fine sand. I have even found a tar-like substance on the underside if my bumpers. I know of other locations where the citizens have brought forward their concerns and the works then had to rinse their vehicles before driving onto highways.
Thanks!

Dear Juneau Resident,

I hope you are enjoying every minute of this time with your new-ish car! Ah, the memories. It was 1993 and the red Jeep Cherokee was perfect! If only there was some way to put a shield around a vehicle during the honeymoon period. Something to repel shopping cars, door dings from other vehicles, and road debris like tar, rocks, and dust. The whole experience is a little bit of an altered state that is fun to remember years later, like a high school crush. People have been known to find the softest cotton cloths, the ones used for baby blankets, to polish a car's headlights during this period.

I don't get the feeling you are as far gone as others have been when it comes to caring for a car but you still might benefit from some backup, someone not in a new car relationship, to help you with the next step in addressing this issue. You and that other person could look at the situation together and discuss whether or not the material being tracked onto the road constitutes an unreasonable safety hazard to a reasonable person. Then if the information would point your average citizen toward claiming a road hazard, it would be appropriate to call JPD and the Department of Transportation. Both have ways of mitigating road hazards. One of the solutions to mitigate a road hazard might be rinsing the trucks but the first step is to establish that a hazard from tracked material exists.

It is illegal for a driver to fail to secure a load. You should call in a report to JPD if you see trucks from the quarry going down the road with material blowing off the top or falling off the sides.

Enjoy that car! And please feel sorry for a red Jeep running around town, one headlight falling drunkenly out of the socket. That same Jeep used to have it's headlights polished with brushed cotton.